When Seyna awoke, she wasn't alone.
The village square had changed. Or perhaps, unfolded.
People were gathering—strangers with familiar eyes, ancestors cloaked in borrowed bodies, the once-lost returning not in flesh but in presence. Time had become circular.
And in the center of it all stood Dari, the wandering musician whose song had awakened something ancient in her. His lute hung silent at his side, and his eyes held tears that did not fall.
"You saw it," he whispered. "Didn't you?"
She nodded.
"It's begun."
Dari's voice was low, reverent, as though any louder sound might rupture the moment. The morning light caught in his lashes, and behind him, the people of Kir Amari moved like petals in a divine current—drawn, inexplicably, to the same space where history and prophecy now kissed.
Seyna reached into her satchel and pulled out the woven book of dreams Amira had once kept—a relic now restored by memory and myth. It had returned to her, left wrapped in violet cloth at her door with no note, only a feather pressed between the pages.
She opened it slowly.
On the first page, where the ink had long since faded, new script now shimmered—written in the same hand Amira used to scribe sacred poems in the lighthouse:
"Where love endures, time bends. Where truth is honored, the veil yields. And where the song is remembered, none are ever truly lost."
It was not only a message. It was a map.
A trail etched in story. A guide toward what must be done.
"We need to gather them," Seyna murmured.
"Who?" Dari asked.
"Everyone who carries the echo. Everyone left behind by the parting. Everyone born of those whispers."
Dari met her eyes. "The Songbearers."